


a place like home

by minthalo



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bonding, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, Homesickness, M/M, Slow Burn, a bit of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 05:21:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18243197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minthalo/pseuds/minthalo
Summary: Lance begins to feel homesick, and finds comfort in sharing his feelings with Lotor





	a place like home

**Author's Note:**

> fuck canon this is my show now lotor isnt evil

Lance sits curled in his bunk on the Castle, today has been a bad day, nothing bad really happened, it was a usual day on the Castle of Lions. He was woken up by Allura doing a training drill in the morning, it’s been happening every week lately, he isn’t too upset by them anymore, he learns to prepare for them and deal with it, it’s the only way to make the Princess happy.

Then Lance ate breakfast with Hunk and Pidge before they went their separate ways to work on some tech stuff he doesn’t understand. Lance trained with Shiro for a few hours before Shiro was called away by Allura and Lotor, leader business that he would only be excluded from if he tried to tag along.

Everything he’s done that day was an attempt to hide from the ever growing feelings of homesickness he’s had since he found the Blue Lion. 

After a quick shower he landed back to his bedroom, normally he would try and find someone else to bother, something else to do, anything to distract himself from these feelings, but everyone is busy with things that he doesn’t understand, nothing he can help with.

Keith is still with The Blade, so Lance can’t pester him into paying attention to him. Lance is left alone with his own thoughts, his own feelings, he can’t hide from any longer. 

So that is where Lance is, curled up as small as possible with a blanket wrapped around his entire body, trying, and failing, to deal with feeling homesick.

 

Lance hears his bedroom doors open and sticks his head up, hair a wild bedhead mess, and sees Coran standing in the doorway. He gives him a weak smile and sits up, cross legged on his bed, he has to duck his head just a bit, being too tall to properly sit up on his bed like that.

Coran flashes the paladin a bright smile, “Lance! It’s midday, what are you doing cooped up in your bed?”

Lance shrugs, brushing down his hair with his hand, “uh, I don’t know. I trained already, Pidge and Hunk are helping with tech stuff, the Princess, Lotor, and Shiro are all doing diplomatic stuff. I’m just not feeling that great anyway…”

Coran tilts his head, “why not?”

“Just homesick really…”

Coran walks into Lance’s room and takes him by his hand, pulling him out of bed a bit roughly, “I have just the cure.”

Lance goes to argue with him, but finds no chance to speak up at all, Coran chatters away down the hall, into the elevator, and to the top of the castle, up until they arrive at doors Lance has never seen before.

“Uh, where are we?” Lance asks. “I’ve never been to this part of the castle before.” 

Coran gives Lance a smile and opens the door, letting Lance walk inside first. The room is a half moon shaped, the curved walls are clear windows, showing the stars around them as they float aimlessly in space.

The clear windows all around him doesn’t make Lance feel any less homesick, in fact it makes him feel a bit worse, the dark nothingness of space void of anything but bright white stars in the distance only serve as a reminder of how far away from home he really is.

Lance turns to Coran, he doesn’t want to be rude, Coran is only trying to help him, he thought that this would make him feel better. He opens his mouth only to be cut off once again by Coran placing a hand on his shoulder.

“You mentioned before that your home on Earth had large oceans, and beaches for miles of just sand.”

Lance nods, he isn’t sure where Coran is going with this, so he keeps quiet. 

“I want you to close your eyes, and concentrate on that, a specific place, part of your home that you miss, and wish you could revisit.”

Lance does as told, he shuts his eyes and relaxes his shoulders, thinking of the beach behind his childhood home, somewhere he would go with his siblings almost every day, a place he would sneak out to whenever he was upset and sit on the beach to listen to the waves. thinking of it now it’s almost like he’s there, he can smell the salty water, hear the calm waves crash onto shore, it’s like being at home.

“Open your eyes, Lance.”

Lance does as told, as he looks around the room it’s transformed completely from white tile and clear windows to the sandy beach he called home. Overwhelmed with emotions he can’t stop the tears from pooling in his eyes.

Coran smiles, “Allura used to come up here often, to visit her memories of Altea, lately she hasn’t needed to, but I thought this might help you.”

Lance can only nod, he knows if he even tried to speak what will come out is a choked up sob. He turns and wraps his arms around the older man, beyond thankful for this.

Coran rubs his back gently, holding him for a few moments before pulling away, “I have to get back to Allura, but you can stay here as long as you need.” 

Lance pulls away and wipes away the stray tears that dripped down his cheeks. “Thank you, Coran,” he whispers.

He stays for hours in that room, sitting on the beach and listening to the waves that remind him of home.

 

Lance goes back to the simulation room often, almost every day, he’s settled into a routine, wake up, eat breakfast, go to the training deck, either with another paladin or alone, depending on how much work needs to be done, eat lunch, then go up to the top of the castle to clear his mind, and remember home.

Being able to visually see what he misses so much makes him feel a bit more homesick at time, when he can’t touch the water, or play in the sand properly, but it helps more than it hurts. His mood improves greatly, he’s more focused in his training, even managing to unlock a sword bayard while he does. He jokes around with his fellow paladins, and even manages to make a proper conversation with Lotor at the dinner table, only insulting him backhandedly once.

For a few weeks everything has been in a routine, Lance getting comfortable with it, he starts to feel happy again.

That is until Sendak attacks a planet in line with the Voltron Coalition. It happens in the middle of Lance’s usual lunch, the sirens go off while he’s attempting to steal some of Pidge’s food goo.

All of the paladins act immediately, dropping what they’re doing and rushing to their Lions and speeding off to the nearby planet, forming Voltron and dealing with the threat as quickly as they can. Coran stays behind as well as Lotor, the two of them controlling the Castle’s weapons.

The battle finishes well after Lance’s usual dinner time, everyone is beyond exhausted by the time they get back to the castle. Lance heads straight for the showers, he takes a long one, hot water on his stiff muscles, the battle lasted longer than expected, staying in Red’s cockpit for so long his body needs to be loosened up.

By the time he’s out of the shower and dressed in comfortable pajamas the castle is silent, seamingly everyone in their own bedrooms. The battle interrupted his daily routine, he didn’t have time to eat lunch much less go to the simulation room to remind himself of home.

He slips down to the kitchen in his lion slippers and makes himself a bowl of food goo to take with him.

He quietly makes his way up to the top of the castle up to the familiar room, as he walks inside the first thing he notices is the white tiled floor and clear windows are neither of those things at the moment, someone else is here, and they have changed the surroundings to somewhere Lance has never been before.

The surroundings are of a beautiful purple mountain range, with blue flowers bloomed in the valleys and up the sides of the mountains. The sky is a Dark green with fluffy pink clouds, it reminds Lance of the cotton candy he used to get at festivals with his siblings before he left for the Galaxy Garrison. 

He slowly makes his way inside to see Lotor laying in the center of the room, his eyes eyes trained on a pink cloud in a vague shape of a yupper. Lance takes a seat next to him, crossing his legs, he knows Lotor heard him walk in, he saw his pointed ears twitch.

Lotor sits up, smoothing down his hair with one hand, “Hello, Lance.”

“Hey… food goo?” He holds out the bowl.

Lotor shakes his head, “no, thank you. I didn’t think you would come up here at this hour, I’ve noticed you only take a trip during the day.”

“Oh, yeah the battle kind of messed with my routine, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep without coming up here first… Is this where you grew up?”

Lotor shakes his head, “no, I grew up on a ship, not on a planet.”

Lance frowns, he forgot Lotor never had a planet to call home when he grew up, the way the paladins have earth, and Allura has Altea.

“Oh, right…” He trails off.

Lotor clears his throat, “this is a planet called Thilmion, my father sent me there when I was young. I was accompanied by my governess, Dayak, we spent most of our time on the Galra base there, but at night I learned the pattern of the guards quickly, and was able to sneak out.”

“Is this where you would go?” Lance asks, softly.

Lotor nods, “yes, It would take me half a varga to get up this hill, but I knew once I was up here I was safe, there would be no guards up here to hide from. I was able to lay down and look at the clouds, here was the closest thing to a real home I had, one that wasn’t on a ship.”

“It’s beautiful up here, I can see why your younger self was so attracted to this spot.” Lance says, looking off into the distance.

Lotor smiles to himself, looking up at the clouds once more, “yeah…”

“The clouds, they remind me of cotton candy, they’re pink and fluffy it’s like I could reach out and take a bite.”

Lotor turns to Lance, his head tilted to the side, “Cotton candy?”

“Uh, yeah. Do you have like, a Galran equivalent to it, it’s like um, like spun sugar.” Lance attempts to explain it.

Lotor shakes his head, “I don’t think we do, although I was never allowed many sweets as a boy.” 

“It’s really good, very sweet though, it’s basically just melted down sugar then strung on a cone or stick. It has a lot of different names though, on earth there are other countries with different dialects of the same language, where I lived we called it Cotton candy, other countries call it Candy floss, Fairy floss, or just the literal name of spun sugar. A lot of countries have names for it in their own languages, on Earth we don’t have one set language that the rest of the world speaks there are so many others-”

“You talk a lot.” Lotor cuts Lance’s unintentional rambling off.

Lance shrinks back a bit, “yeah, I know…”

“It’s not a bad thing, just an observation, you can keep talking about Earth, that’s what your planet is called isn’t it?”

Lance nods, “yeah, Earth. I miss it… a lot… I haven’t seen much of the Earth really, I only know where I was raised, and where the Galaxy Garrison is, where I learned how to pilot.”

“Where do you go, when you come up here?”

“Where I was raised, the beach behind my house.”

“Will you show me?” It’s a question Lance wasn’t expecting, and it must show on his face, because Lotor immediately recoils. “You don’t have to, that was very forward of me,” he apologizes. 

Lance quickly shakes his head, “No, no. It’s just not what I was expecting. I’ll show you.”

He closes his eyes and rests his hands in his lap, around the bowl of food goo, with enough concentration it almost feels like he’s holding a bowl of his Mama’s cooking. He thinks of midnight swims with his cousins, warm ocean water and cool sand under their feet.

Lance opens his eyes to see Lotor watching the ocean in front of him, waves crashing onto the shore, water pulling back leaving new shells and sand in its place.

“This is where you grew up?” Lotor asks.

Lance nods, “yeah, this was my backyard. I’m extremely lucky to have lived so close to the beach like this, I would walk down every day for a swim, by myself or with my siblings or some of my cousins.”

“Did you have a lot of family near you?”

“God, yeah. I have four older siblings and my parents both have family nearby, I was raised with my cousins at my side for everything, we’d have gatherings for every little thing.”

Lotor hums, “I never had family like that, my mother passed away in childbirth, and my father was never the nurturing kind. I had tutors and my governess around.”

“You didn’t have any other children to play with?” Lance asks. 

Lotor shakes his head, “no, I imagine that if my father wasn’t so corrupted by quintessence he would have had me meet with other children of important empires, like Allura for example, but that is not how it went down. I was born and my father started a war, I had no family around for me to be around, or other children to form bonds with.”

“That’s awful.” Lance frowns.

Lotor shrugs, his eyes on the ocean in front of him. “It is what it is, I can not change the past, I can only focus on building a better future.”

“I really took it for granted, my family being so close, I used to just walk into my Tio’s house like it was my own, and it was never a problem. When I moved to the Garrison I thought that was the hardest thing I’d ever have to do, but now I’m light years away from home, and it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Lance turns his head to see Lotor is already looking at him, sharp purple eyes turned soft, he’s never seen them look like this before. 

“You’ll be able to go home soon, when the war is over and you’re sure your home is safe.” Lotor says.

The tone of his voice alone makes Lance believe him.

 

They spend the rest of the night in the room together, Lance tells Lotor more stories about his home, memories he has with his family and friends on earth. He changes the scenery to the Garrison at one point, showing Lotor where he met the others.

Lotor recounts experiences he’s had on other alien planets, pleasant encounters with natives, learning from them and showing them that not all Galra are like his father. He shows Lance some of his favorite spots on the planets he’s visited, planets that his father destroyed without mercy.

As he talks Lance begins to feel for the Prince, the same way he feels for Allura when she talks of memories of Altea. Lotor never got to have a real childhood, he was groomed to follow in his father’s footsteps and the moment he began to form his own thoughts, and realize his father isn’t a great emperor like he was raised to believe, Lotor was punished for it.

Everything he loved was taken away from him, the closest thing he had to friends were his Generals, and he had to murder one because Haggar had taken over, he never got to properly mourn her loss either. The other Generals have gone rouge for their own safety, and now Lotor is left alone again. 

They don’t realize how late they’ve stayed up together, exchanging memories, until the warning alarm goes off, no doubt another drill from Allura and Coran. The two are startled out of their stories and rush out of the room, down different halls.

 

It becomes a regular thing with the two of them, Lance’s routine changes from his usual after lunch alone time in the simulation room to waiting until after dinner to go up to the room with Lotor.

To fill the void in his schedule he starts to spend more time with Coran, he can always use and assistant, and loves to teach a willing student. He helps out Pidge and Hunk whenever they’re doing some tech repair, mostly it’s just holding things while the other two who actually know what they’re doing fix the problem.

The change in Lance’s routine doesn’t go unnoticed, but no one mentions it. His mood improves as well, he turns back to his playful self, joking around with his friends. He hides Pidge’s laptop with Shiro and watches her tear apart her room looking for it.

Eventually she finds it hidden in the vent, and retaliated by stripping Lance’s bedsheets and hanging them across the Red Lion’s snout, and taking his lion slippers and putting them in the oven.

It took him three days to find them.

It was the start of a four week long prank war that ended only when the Blade of Marmora came to visit, giving a report and staying on the ship for a few days. Pidge was caught up with the new information and tech they brought she didn’t have the time to continuously plan pranks on Lance.

Lance took advantage of the skilled company and used the time to train, learning new techniques in hand to hand combat. He also was able to sword fight with Keith, he was bested in the end, the other man having more experience, but Keith was genuinely impressed with Lance, and how far he’s come since the last time they saw each other.

That alone Lance counted as a win.

 

On the last night the Blade are spending on the Castle of Lions they all sit down to have dinner together. Lance takes a seat next to Lotor on instinct, they’ve been sitting with each other for weeks now, whether they have dinner as a group or alone.

The rest of the paladins don’t think anything of it, when Lance steals some of Lotor’s food goo when he isn’t looking, and Lotor only rolls his eyes, it’s normal banter between the two of them, something the paladins are used to.

Keith however, hasn’t been on the Castle in months, and hasn’t been around to watch the slow progression of Lance outright hating Lotor, to them becoming close friends. Seeing Lance be so comfortable around the Prince is quite a shock to him.

 

“I never thought I’d see the day where Lance would be friendly with Lotor of all people. How did you guys trick him into that?”

Lance looks over and frowns a bit, he knew he wasn’t the most friendly towards the prince, but he didn’t think it was that noticeable to everyone around him, apparently he was wrong.

Pidge looks up from her food and shrugs, “Honestly, I don’t know. One day Lance woke up and decided to be nice, at least that’s what it seems like that’s what happened.”

Lance shrugs it off and the topic changes, but he can’t help but feel a bit guilty he was so rude to Lotor before, someone he is now so close to, almost as close as he is to Hunk.

 

Later, Lance sits up in the simulation room with Lotor laying on his back, they’re both watching what looks like whales swim across the sky on an alien planet Lotor visited long before Lance or any of the paladins were in his life.

“Was I really so mean to you?” Lance asks quietly.

Lotor looks over and shrugs, “you never said anything I didn’t deserve. Not long ago we were enemies. I was serving an empire that committed genocide on more than one occasion across galaxies.”

“Still, even after, when you began working with us, building proper ships with Allura and giving us inside information about what the Galra are planning. The rest of the team came around much quicker than I did.”

“You aren’t as trusting, you were worried for your teams wellbeing, Allura specifically.” 

“Yeah… I just, I wasn’t sure about you at first, I didn’t realize I kept being so rude long after I should have stopped, and everyone noticed too.”

“I don’t see it as a bad thing, you aren’t quick to trust, it’s an admirable trait, you shouldn’t be, especially in an ongoing war.”

Lance hums, he lays back and curls a bit towards Lotor, their heads touching, “can you tell me about the gonee again?”

Lotor smiles, he takes Lance’s hand and points up to the whale like creatures, the gonee flying above them, and launches into a story about them.

 

Time passes and shit goes down, Lotor kills his father, Keith finds his mother, Keith comes back to Voltron two years older, Shiro tries to kill Keith, only it wasn’t actually Shiro he was being manipulated by Haggar, real Shiro is brought back to life at Allura’s hands.

Lance cries, feeling awful, his leader confided in him, said he wasn’t feeling right, Shiro called out to him in the astral plane, and Lance wasn’t able to help him, and in the end it put the team in danger.

Shiro attempts to comfort him, placing his arm around him and telling him it’s not his fault, he didn’t know what was going on, he did what he could, and that was enough.

After that they take Shiro to rest and Lance finds Lotor for comfort, he confesses what he saw in the astral plane, and how he feels useless, and like he let the team down for not being able to help more, not being able to figure it out before Haggar’s programing took over.

He gets emotional as he talks, tears beginning to flow down his face. This isn’t the first time Lotor has seen him cry, he’s cried before when talking about his family, overwhelmed with emotions, and how much he misses them.

Lotor comforts him, pulling him close and letting him release the pent of feelings he’s had. Eventually Lance falls asleep in his arms, Lotor keeps him close, instead of moving him to a separate bed he lets Lance lay on top of him, and falls asleep with him in his arms.

When Lance wakes up his head is resting on Lotor’s chest, he can’t bring himself to move until the other wakes up, feeling safe in his arms.

 

For the most part of the space road trip Lotor stays in Red with Lance or Blue with Allura. At first they tried having Lotor pilot the ship he made with Allura, but it isn’t quite finished, and ran out of power quickly. 

Instead they attached it to the tail of Blue and let Allura pull the ship along while Lotor lion jumps as a passenger. He’s most comfortable in Allura and Lance’s lions, the two paladins he’s closest with.

The trip takes a while, eventually Shiro wakes up and meets Lotor properly, he mostly stays in the black lion with Keith, but he lion hops more than Lotor, staying with Hunk in Yellow for a while before switching between Pidge and Allura.

Eventually he ends up in the red lion with Lance and Lotor, it’s awkward at first, Lotor not really knowing how to act around Shiro, that is until Lance breaks again, apologizing to Shiro again, starting to cry as he does.

On instinct Lotor sits on the armrest of Lance’s pilots chair and wraps an arm around him, giving him a bit of comfort.

Shiro tells him, once again, that it wasn’t his fault, there was no way Lance could have figured it out with the small messages Shiro attempted to give him, and the only reason Keith did is because he found hundreds of Shiro clones in pods, and put everything together based off of that. Shiro is safe with the team now, and Haggar isn’t in his head, manipulating them, she doesn’t have access to the team any longer.

The soft touches from Lotor don’t go over Shiro’s head, he doesn’t know if Lance realizes just how he is with him, but he’s sure he isn’t the only one who has noticed the way the two of them act with each other.

 

After another stop Shiro switches lions again, going back to black with Keith, he’s most comfortable there, after all he did pilot this lion, and his consciousness was saved by her as well. 

While he’s sitting in the cockpit with Keith he brings up his findings. “Hey, have you noticed something a bit odd about Lance and Lotor?”

Keith looks over at him, “how Lance doesn’t hate him?”

“No, it’s more than that. When I was in Red with Lance, he started apologizing again and got a bit emotional, and Lotor sat next to him and pulled him closer, it was like he was acting on instinct.”

Keith hums, “That is a bit weird, a big change. The last time I was around them was a while ago, when I was still with the blade. We went to the castle to update Allura on a few things and they seemed much closer than usual, but the last time I saw them Lance actively hated him and was still flirting with Allura.”

Shiro hums, “Patch in the others, leave out Lance, I want to know if they’ve seen it too.” 

Keith flicks a few switches and Pidge, Hunk, and Allura’s faces light up the screen.

“Hey, Keith, what’s up.” Pidge says, cosmo is in Green with her, Keith can see his head resting on her lap.

“Where’s Lance?” Hunk asks.

“Lance is what we wanted to talk about actually.” Shiro speaks up, “about him and Lotor.”

“Oh is this about how they’re totally dating?” Hunk says, sitting back in his seat.

“What?” Allura says, leaning in, “I mean I noticed they were close but I never thought they could be romantically involved, at least not without Lance telling us first, has he said anything about it?”

“He hasn’t told me anything.” Pidge says, scratching behind Cosmo’s ears, “but he never used to talk to me about that stuff anyway. Why are you asking?”

“He hasn’t said anything to me either,” Hunk says, “I was just assuming, I mean you’ve seen the two of them, they went from hating each other to spending every night together, they think we don’t hear them coming down the elevator together in the middle of the night, what else would they be doing in some secret room at the top of the castle together. I just put two and two together.”

“Top of the castle… secret room…” Allura takes a moment to think before turning to Coran, “did you show them the simulation room?”

Coran nods, “yes, I did. I thought it would help them, Lance with his homesickness, and give Lotor something familiar so he wouldn’t feel so out of place here, I didn’t know they started going up there together.”

“Maybe they’re just bonding, or whatever. Not everything is romantic.” Pidge says.

“Well yeah, but Lance has stopped flirting with Allura, hasn’t made a single comment about her in a long time.” Hunk brings up.

“I think the question we should be asking isn’t whether it is or isn’t happening, it’s if it is happening, are we okay with it?” Shiro says, getting everyone to think for a moment.

Eventually Hunk nods, “yeah, Lotor is cool, he like, totally isn’t evil anymore, plus he’s nice to us, and to Lance.”

Both Pidge and Keith nod in agreement, “I don’t see a problem with it.” Pidge says, turning her eyes to Allura’s screen.

She nods as well, “I think they’d make a fantastic couple, and I’d love to teach them about traditional royal Altean courting, although Coran has more experience with that than I do.” 

“In a way Coran is the reason they’re close at all.” Hunk says.

Coran grins, fluffing out his moustache, “well, well, well, guess I’m the matchmaker on this team, I wonder who I can sneakily pair together next.”

The rest of the team collectively groan, and Keith hangs up from the call before he can say anything else.

 

It takes a long time, but eventually they arrive on Earth, it’s not what they expected to see, but it’s still their home, and safe enough for them to settle down and begin building a new castle, a new home for the Lions. 

They all have tearful reunions with their families, Lance runs in and nearly tackles his mother to the floor, the rest of his family piling on top of him. Pidge jumps into her mother’s arms and Hunk is able hug his own parents, pulling his nieces and nephews close to him.

Keith is able to take Krolia to see his father’s grave, his family reunited in a way.

 

After the craziness of them being on earth calms down Lance is able to go home with his family, he takes Lotor with him, figuring he’d be more comfortable with him than on a base with people who know him as the son of a mass murdering emperor. 

Lance introduces Lotor to all of his family, Lotor knows all of Lance’s family members names from all the stories he’s been told, and can match the names to each personality. 

He drags Lotor around everywhere, determined to teach him about earth culture and customs. There’s a lot of overlap between Galra and Earth, such as greeting with a handshake, but little things like taking off shoes before entering a house Lotor loves to learn about.

Once they’re able to have a full day to themselves Lance shows him all of his favorite spots, every place that they saw together in the simulation room, Lance is determined to show to him so he can feel the energy, and be able to touch what he couldn’t then. 

They walk everywhere, so Lance can take detours and shortcuts wherever he wants, he shows Lotor his favorite tree in a local park. As Lotor admires it Lance climbs to the top and jumps off, forcing him to go into panic mode and rush to catch him.

Lance finds it hilarious, Lotor does not. Lotor keeps one hand on Lance for the rest of the day, afraid he’ll wander off and attempt to hurt himself again. Lance has survived an intergalactic space war, Lotor isn’t going to let him die because he jumps out of a tree.

They find their way into town and Lance goes through each of the shops before he finally finds what he’s looking for, freshly made cotton candy. He figured it would be difficult to find, with Earth being caught up in the war, but once he gets it he takes Lotor back to his house, and to the beach he went to so often as a child, to eat the sweet treat.

Lance’s family is inside helping with dinner, at first they tried to go inside to help as well, but Lance’s mother quickly kicked them outside again, Lotor is a guest in their house, and this is Lance’s official welcome home dinner.

 

Lotor sits on the sand beside Lance, letting their sides touch. It’s identical to the view they had in the simulation room, only this time Lotor can touch and feel the sand under him a way he couldn’t then. The sounds aren’t like they’re on a recorded loop, they’re genuine and real, being able to watch the seagulls fly above them, more bold ones coming closer looking for food.

He takes a bite of the cotton candy and smiles, “you’re right, it does look like the clouds on Thilmion, but it tastes very sweet.”

Lance hums, “yeah, it’s pure sugar, that’s what makes it so good.”

“Your family is sweet to me, even after knowing all my father has done.”

“You and the other paladins are like family to me, and they trust family.” Lance finishes off the cotton candy and stands up, pulling Lotor with him. “Come on, let’s go for a swim.”

“Right now? Before dinner, won’t your mother be upset if we come inside wet from the water?” 

Lance shrugs, “it’s her own fault for leaving us unsupervised.” He strips off his shirt, shoes and shorts, looking to Lotor to do the same.

Lotor sighs but does the same, swimming in the same water Lance has talked about for hours on end. He lets his shirt fall to the floor and takes Lance’s hand again, letting himself be dragged to the shoreline and into the water.

Lance releases his hand and ducks his head under the water swimming out a bit farther before coming back up for air, shaking his head off. Lotor smiles and does the same, dunking his head.

The water is warmer than he expected, it’s nice really. He can open his eyes under water, something he notices quickly, Lance isn’t able to do.

He swims after him for a few minutes, chasing him around under water, Lance is a fast swimmer, he’s had years of practice. Eventually he catches up with him, grabbing his ankle and pulling him back, then grabbing his hands as they float back to the surface.

Lance takes a deep breath in, opening his eyes with a bright smile. 

“You’re very comfortable in the water.” Lotor comments

“I’m very comfortable with you.” He places his arms around Lotor’s neck. 

Lotor dips his head down, resting his head on Lance’s forehead, “are you?”

Lance bites his lip and nods, pressing a bit closer, their chests almost touching, “m very comfortable with you.”

“How comfortable is-” 

Lotor is cut off by Lance pushing himself up in the water and kissing him. At first, Lotor is surprised, but he quickly recovers, placing a hand on the back of Lance’s neck and kisses back, closing his eyes.

Lance relaxes, melting into the kiss, like a weight was lifted off his shoulder the moment Lotor kissed him back. Lotor lets his other hand rest on Lance’s lower back, keeping everything soft and sweet.

They break the kiss when they hear their names called in the distance, Veronica calling them inside for dinner. 

Lotor takes a few breaths before looking down at Lance with a soft smile, “you kissed me.”

“You kissed back.” Lance grins, brushing their noses together.

Lotor closes his eyes, leaning down just a bit, “We have to go inside, your family is waiting for us.”

“In a moment,” Lance leans up again. “I’m not done here.”

**Author's Note:**

> well i wrote that in a few days it was supposed to be like 2k oops  
> comment and kudos pls i need attention to live  
> You can contact me at [my voltron tumblr Shiroskitten](http://shiroskitten.tumblr.com/) if u wanna talk abt st uff


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